Unsurprisingly there's not a huge difference in the output of the A710 IS and its predecessor - I would imaging the lens is the limiting factor here, and the extra million pixels (we're talking about 200 pixels or so horizontally and vertically) makes little, if any difference. There is marginally more detail in the A710's shot, but I doubt it's anything you'd see in a print. Ultimately the A710 IS offers everything the A700 had; good edge-to-edge detail, bright, but natural color (though it is a touch contrastier) and fairly clean output. My only complaint is that Canon appears to have gone back to its old trick of boosting the reds so far that they start to look a little false; I prefer the slightly more subtle approach used in the A700, and that the results are a little on the soft side. The saving grace is that Canon's Custom Color controls offer lots of control over sharpness, contrast and saturation, so you can at least find a setting that suits your tastes.